Definitely the weirdest image I've seen this week. Presumably they shared the same premises. How on earth did they decide on such an elegant Britannia engraving and script? Although I'm (fairly) sure it's just age-related chance, the splattered appearance seems somehow appropriate. {Slop Merchant being a seller of goods to ships/military - thanks biteyourowntail}

The pair of Tub Soap girls and the Soapine carriage advertisement {~1880} are of particular interest because the artist/lithographer was Charlotte Perkins Gilman (neice of Harriet Beecher Stowe) who would later become a notable writer/social reformer and feminist. Her 1892 short story 'The Yellow Wallpaper' was a first hand account of post-partum depression and suffering at the hands of (learned) quackery. The great medical minds of the day recommended isolation from family, near-total bed rest, restriction of intellectual activity and occasional application of electricity to the muscles. See: i, ii, iii.

This was also something of an experi-mental post: I just wanted to check out Webshots as an image host. Click on any of the images above and then on the '+' button below the flash window to see the full size version. I guess there are advantages and disadvantages. While I'm constructing this post there appears to be excessive digital compression artifact - much more than I would normally get if I resized the images myself. Hm. Any thoughts?

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Hard to say. I'm pretty sure I'll be happy as long as you keep posting, regardless of which image host you go for. I'm also all for saving time, which I assume not having to resize the images does for you...

biteyourowntail, somehow your name is appropriate here and I admit my very very cursory search was slanted with a preconceived notion in mind. Ouch! I was led to believe they were 2 businesses by the Triptych site notes. Britannia is a very familiar symbol - but like the script, elegant embellishment also seemed out of place with my preformed idea. Thanks for the info!

Rachel, I suppose I was partly talking to myself re: the image hosting/quality. What I didn't say is that my normal practice (which really is no work in the throes of hammering a post together) is to keep the upload size to no bigger than about 1500x1500 with portraits at about 1700x1000/1100, tops. This is about the largest that the blogger uploading/storing architecture can deal with.

So the automatic resizing to format for the post doesn't actually compress the images as much normally as it in fact did here in this post because the uploaded images to Webshots are mostly much larger than the 1500x1500 range.

As I say, there are some advantages afforded through webshots that are timesaving -- readjusts to multi image sizes and has a simple code copy interface.

It was just a test. I'm at 90% of my image storage allowance via blogger/google and I'm kind of thinking out loud/in practice as to what I'll do moving forward. For me, or at least, in my complexificating mind, there are a LOT of competing and interconnected elements to take into consideration. My number one thought though is to have the image presentation quality here on the site as high as possible, so this 'test' at least shows me perhaps why google/blogspot have that upload limit in place, in a quality/compression noise from automatic resizing-sense.

A suggestion. Very interesting ads and good quality reprodution of illustrations in a Portuguese magazine published 1922/26http://hemerotecadigital.cm-lisboa.pt/OBRAS/CONTEMPORANEA/ContemporaneaPDF.htm

"Before radio and television, trade cards were considered a mainstay. These colorful, interesting cards were circulated to generate interest in a product. Nowadays, they are quite collectable--and beautiful."

Very interested in the Lewis Jacobs Trade Card. My 2xgreat grandfather was Moses Jacobs and he had a glass works at the same address until it burnt down in 1829. (Moses was charged with arson and the court case is reported on the Old Bailey Trials web site.) This card suggests his cousin took over the business and presumably re-built the glassworks. I intend to cover the life of Moses Jacobs in my blog - http://jacobsoflondon.blogspot.co.uk/ - would you mind if I displayed a copy of this image on my blog? Do you have any further information about Lewis Jacobs?

Jacobs of London, thanks for your comment and what an interesting avenue of family history research you have! I'm glad for your comment, too, because I'd nearly forgotten this post. To be honest, it's not me from whom you need to seek permission (if you want to be a stickler for rights/permission). You'll note in the blurb after the images that there's a link to the original repository from which the images in this post were selected. Write to them. I've never heard any complaint from them since this blog entry was posted 5-odd years ago, so perhaps you'll be ok if you post the image(s) and include a link to the site of origin. Good luck.